An intrusion-prevention system (IPS) is part of an overall security strategy to protect your network from attack. The IPS literally prevents an attack by blocking bad stuff, such as viruses or malformed packets, from getting into the company network.

Sitting directly behind the firewall, the IPS examines in detail all the traffic passed by the firewall, reassembles it and "scrubs" it where necessary (removing any attempts at obfuscation or evasion) and compares it to a database of known attack patterns.

By Bob Walder at Computerworld.

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